Flame and Fang

Bound by Fate

Book 1 : Flame and Fang

Every shift began the same way.

Outside, as the sky faded from crimson to indigo, among the soughing cedars and the rustle of night creatures just beginning their hunts, Mara poured a measure of salt into her palm, then began a slow walk around the clinic’s edge, drifting the precious grains between her fingers as she chanted a protective spell. She was careful to cast her circle away from the glow of the interior lights. Start at the front, across the small parking lot, past the wheezing air conditioner, the trash cans, around Vic’s bloodmobile and her own rusting truck, around her tiny herb garden, and back to the front. Every time, two hundred fifty-seven steps. Every time, two hundred fifty-seven recitals of the words to protect her and Vic. As she closed the circle and dusted her hands on her scrubs, she knew the time would come when it was not going to be enough.

A three-quarter moon cast a weak shadow in front of her as she walked to the clinic’s double doors. Before stepping inside, she looked back at the cool, blue light. In a few days, her other side would overwhelm and submit to the call to run under Luna’s full strength. Mara sighed softly. It would be a long day, work at the clinic under the sun, then, the one day a month her other side took over, she would shift and howl, as far away as possible from any others like her.

These twenty-eight years had been quite a ride, neither fully one thing or another, rejected by both, feared by both. And so, she’d forged her own path, however lonely. It was hers.

Vic glanced up from where she sat in one of the clinic’s three waiting room chairs, sucking on a straw. The fluorescent lighting gave her pale skin a greenish cast.“All set?”

“Yup.”

“Any news?”

Mara shrugged, knowing Vic asked because she cared. “Mr. Marsden was in last week to get stitches out and said he’d heard a scouting pack had been sighted outside of Carson.”

Vic’s eyebrows and their many piercings rose. “Yours?”

“Let’s hope not.”

Vic took a long suck on her straw, then when she saw Mara watching, hastily licked the red from lips.She grinned. “B negative, my favorite.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “Better not be from our shipment.”

“Nah, it was expired.” She angled her head. “Yours is already in the fridge.”

“Thanks.” Mara walked behind the admissions desk/her office, and scanned patient reports from the day shift.

“Busy day?” Vic said.

“A little leaguer with a broken arm, two women in for prenatal visits, a follow-up EKG, a couple school vaccinations, pretty normal. Thank God it’s a Tuesday.”

Vic smiled, her showing her canines. “No bar fights.”

“You heading out soon?”

Vic’s smile faded. “Sorry.”

Mara rubbed her eyes. “No, I’m sorry. I had another of those phone calls and now I’ll have to get a new phone.”

Vic put down her cup. “How do they keep finding you?”

Mara shook her head. “It’s been a year since the last one, and I’d been hoping we could stay here longer. When you get back, can you take a look around?”

“Sure.” Vic stood, a tiny, thin powerhouse in black and steel piercings. “You know, I’m behind you.”

“I do,” Mara said, feeling the weight of the trust Vic placed in her to keep them safe. “I just dread having to uproot us again.”

“You say it all the time, Mara. We do what we must to survive because nobody else cares.”

“Do I really sound like that?”

Vic grinned.

“Ugh. Get out of here,” Mara said with a groan.

“You by yourself tonight?”

“Brielle took the night off for a hot date. I’m sure we’ll hear all about it tomorrow. And yes, Mother Hen,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

Vic waved and sauntered out the back, the rumble of her bloodmobile van fading as she drove the sixty miles back to the hospital in Carson and her other nightly runs to rural health clinics.

If the head ER doc in Carson suspected anything about Vic or suspected something about her, he didn’t say. But Mara guessed from his usual dry sense of humor, that he would be amused at the irony of his bloodmobile driver possibly being a vampire. He was a good one, Dr. Kerper, a rare human not afraid of the strange.

Mara exhaled, ready to start the nightly paperwork, when she heard the thump, thump of a pickup truck as it skidded on the long gravel road to the clinic, approaching fast. There goes her quiet night.

She scanned the ER cubicle, noting everything for an emergency was in its place. She grabbed her ancient flipphone, stuck it her pants packet and then strode to the double doors, pressing the catches so they would stay open.

Headlights beams canted crazily among the trees as the truck careened along the gravel. Flash floods after last years’ fires had left the road rutted and choppy. Shocked at their speed, Mara stepped back inside the doorway as the truck turned into the small clearing, spraying gravel as it skidded to a stop just outside the salt circle. Drunken laughter and the ungodly smells of stale beer and vomit wafted from the truck. The door opened, and a body was pushed out. More laughter, and the driver gunned the engine, spraying more gravel as he wheeled and sped back down the road.

Mara rushed to the groaning figure on the ground. Male, tall, well-muscled, probably over two hundred pounds, age indeterminate until she got him inside, which was going to be a bitch of a job by herself. Light from the inside let her see blood pooling under him.

Swearing, she called on her wolf for strength and grabbed the man under his shoulders, lifting and dragging him inside. She got him into to the ER cubicle, hit the height adjustment on the gurney to lower it, and then heaved his upper body onto the gurney. She shifted his legs.

His face was bruised, lip split, one eye swollen shut. He groaned, breathing heavily as he clenched one hand over the right side of stomach. Blood welled between his fingers.

Blood loss first.She snapped on gloves, then grabbed a bleeding control kit and used her teeth to tear open the pack. He fought her as she lifted his hand and put the pack of clotting medium and then a thick layer of gauze over his open wound.

“Hey,” she said, putting his hand back, and with the other, taking her flashlight and flicking it towards his eyes. “You’re safe now. Can you open your eyes? Can you tell me your name?”

His eyelids fluttered, revealing whiskey brown eyes glowing with power.

She almost dropped her flashlight. An Alpha.

His lips moved. “Where am I?”

“You’re at the only health clinic for about sixty miles.” She had to be vague in case he remembered.

He tried to sit up, grimaced and groaned, clutching his side as he fell back, panting. “Who are you?”

“I’m a Physician’s Assistant here. And tonight, I’m alone, so I need you to cooperate with me to be able to help you.”

“How did I get here?”

She started him on oxygen, then swabbed his arm, found a vein and inserted an IV. “I’m going to give you some pain killer, you may feel dizzy.”

She put a blood pressure cuff on his other arm, cut away his blood-stained shirt and set up a heart monitor. “Your pulse and blood pressure look good. Can you tell me your name?”

His eyes were fully open now, and he watched, warily, as she cut away the rest of his shirt. “Royce, Royce Hawkins,” he said, his voice melodious and deep.

“Well, Royce,” she said, “You can call me Brielle.”

She started to unbuckle his pants and he grabbed her wrist. “No,” he said.

Arguing with an injured patient never went well. “Royce,” she said, injecting a soothing witch undertone to her voice, “You arrived here dumped out of a moving truck full of drunk loggers. I need to see what other injuries you might have and that means the pants come off.”

The pain killer was starting to work, he blinked and shook his head. “No.” He bared his teeth.

“Yes,” she said gently, shifting him to slide his pants down his legs. His very muscular legs, and a world class ass. “There’s nothing here I haven’t seen before.”

“Shit. Fuck!” he said as she stripped him, then drew a blanket over his legs. He fought the pain killer, panted and tried to sit up. “I have to get out of here.”

“Nope, you’re not going anywhere. Now, let me see that wound.”

Gently, she pried his hand away and lifted the gauze pack. He hissed as she swabbed the wound with disinfectant and then palpated around the now slowly seeping hole. “Who shot you?”

“I don’t know. I stopped at a bar to make call. Reception is so damn bad out here.”

“Yup. Almost nobody around here bothers with a cell phone.” She prodded further, and he hissed some more.“You know, the bullet isn’t that deep.” She met his angry, fuzzy gaze. “I’m going to try to get it out.”

He fell back and put an arm over his eyes. “Do it.”

She maneuvered a thin forceps into the opening, placing her other hand on his chest, both to comfort his wolf, and to hold him if he struggled. He was lucky that whoever shot him was probably drunk and unable to aim. The entry wound was into his abdominal wall and away from major organs. He panted as she worked, but held himself still. He grabbed the wrist of her hand on his chest and squeezed.

Almost immediately, she felt the bullet, small and lodged in a thick band of muscle. Mara worked steadily, edging the forceps tips around the bullet to get a firm grasp and then pulling it straight out. He took a long inhale and then swore.

Blood welled from the wound, but not as much as when he’d arrived. She swabbed the wound again, added two staples, and taped a gauze pack on top.

Mara set the bullet into a specimen cup, wondering at the strange way it caught the light. Curious, she took it to the sink and rinsed away the blood. Silver. It was a silver bullet. She was glad she wore gloves because it tingled her skin even through the latex. She turned to him, holding the bullet for him to see. “Try again. Who shot you?”

His brow wrinkled and his mouth tightened. “Silver?”

“Yes.”

He was getting sleepier, but intelligence still glinted in his eyes as he continued to fight the pain killer. “You know?”

“We get all kinds here,” she said carefully.Including me. “You’re safe with me.”

“What about the drunks in the pickup?”

So, he had been listening. “They’re gone. My concern now is how much damage the silver has caused. You’re going to need a transfusion to be able to heal.”

“You have alpha wolf blood?”

“I have a source.”

She rechecked his vitals, still stable, and added a mild sedative to his IV pack. Then she checked his other injuries, cleaned blood from his face and body, gave him ice packs for his jaw, eye, and lips. His ribs and back were bruised, but layers of thick muscle had protected him from worse injuries. Nowhere did he present with the type of pain to indicate other broken bones or internal bleeding. His lungs were clear.

Gods, but the man had a lot of muscle, and not an ounce of fat. His skin was warm and smooth, with soft, dark hairs dusting his forearms, legs and chest. She didn’t dare let herself think too much about the rest of his perfect body. He eyed her as she worked, still fighting the need to sleep. “Who are you?”

She helped him into a gown, then added a second blanket over the first. “Brielle.”

“You’re lying.”

Another Alpha talent she would do well to remember. “You need to rest. I’m going to call for transport to take you to the closest hospital.”

He struggled to keep his eyes open, his wolf’s glow waning. The sedative was finally working. “Why are you lying?”

With the tip of her forefinger, she gently tapped between his eyes three times, then murmured, “Sleep.”

“Witch,” he whispered, as he finally gave in and closed his eyes. His breaths lengthened, and his head tipped to one side. Mara watched the monitor as his heart rate steadied.

Quietly, she retrieved what she needed. She swabbed her arm, inserted a needle, then attached the other end to the port in his IV and let her blood flow into him. Even half-alpha wolf blood would help him heal faster from the damage silver caused. And she needed him out of here as soon as possible.

She timed the transfusion, reset his saline IV and added an antibiotic. Holding gauze to her elbow, she prepped a report on her computer of the care she’d given, then sent it off to the hospital in Carson, letting them know he would be arriving soon.

The she called Vic. “Hey, how far away are you?”

“I stopped for ice cream, I’m only about 20 miles.”

“Can you get back here ASAP?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have an alpha werewolf that’s been shot with silver. He’s stable and sleeping, but I want him out of here.

“Copy that, see you in 20.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know.”

With nothing to do but wait, Mara, rolled her squeaky desk chair to his bedside. She felt his pulse, strong and steady. Some of his bruises were already turning from blue to yellow-green. She hoped the bullet wound was also healing as fast.

She gathered the remains of his tattered and stained clothes and put them in a plastic bag for transport. As she was folding his pants, she felt the telltale bulge of a smart phone. She’d already seen his smart watch. Mara bit her lip, weighing the ethics of what she was thinking against the need to protect herself and Vic

The decision to move was made the instant she recognized this man as an alpha. Tonight would be her last at this clinic. New identities and credit cards were all ready to go, and she had money saved to pay for the next set when they had to move yet again. She’d chosen this part of the state for its lack of nearby packs, for the lack of cell service and the worn roads that said the state didn’t care to spend money on a rural area with so few registered voters. Tonight, the two of them would decide where to move next, and by morning, no trace of their time here would remain. That was a lesson learned early on.

Her mind made up, she tapped his phone open and then held it up to his face for login. She navigated through the phone’s menus until her finger wavered over the button that said “factory reset.” Mara took a breath and pressed it. The screen went blank and she put his phone into the bag with his other things.

She wasn’t a phone expert, but she knew most recent models had GPS tracking and hoped a factory reset would erase any location data. And that what was erased on the phone would be erased on his smart watch.

His fingers flexed, then curled warmly around her hand. He made a deep rumble of satisfaction, and she let him hold her. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear him.

Touch was so important to werewolves. It grounded mates and families, eased conflict and gave comfort. She wasn’t afraid of him, but of what he represented: the looming threat of her family finding her after all these years and forcing her to return and mate for the sake of a political alliance.

She’d grown up a half wolf, half witch outcast in a proud, cold werewolf clan, who feared her witch powers and scorned her inability to fight or to be able to shift any time other than at full moon. Finding a fated mate was utterly unimportant to her clan. She knew too may wolf females for whom marriages were arranged to ensure purity. Then they had to suffer bites that led only to painful marks and unsuccessful mating bonds.

The sound of the bloodmobile spraying gravel reached her ears, and she smiled. Vic had made good time.

She felt Royce squeeze her hand, and when she looked at him, his eyes were open and gleaming golden, looking straight at her. His wolf was close to the surface.

His lips moved again, and this time she heard him.

“Mate.”